The Risk: Kings of Linwood Academy #3 Read online

  But I can barely keep pressure on it either. I’m not hurt like Dax is, but my vision is still swimming from the blow to the head, and my arms are shaking so badly it’s hard for me to keep my elbows locked.

  “I got it, Low. Let me. Let me, baby.”

  Lincoln’s voice in my ear is like a healing balm to my soul, and I fall back onto my butt as he takes over. His knuckles are bloody, and his face is bruised, a trail of red trickling from the corner of his mouth where it looks like he split his lip, but his expression is a mask of concentration as he finds Chase’s wound, then tears off his own shirt and wads it up, holding it firmly against the bleeding hole.

  “Hollowell…” I mutter raggedly, unable to tear my gaze away from Chase’s face. River and Dax watch him too, all four of us pouring our concentration onto him as if we could heal him with our love alone.

  “Dead.” Lincoln’s voice holds no emotion. “I already checked. And I called 911. They’ll be here soon.”

  Soon.

  That word holds no fucking meaning when your world just exploded into violence, when someone you love is pouring his lifeblood onto a cold, unfeeling floor.

  But soon is all we have, so we wait, still and quiet, our voices strangled with fear, as the wail of sirens grows louder.

  The little gray fox by the fireplace must’ve been hit by a stray bullet. It lies on its side, still attached to the little pedestal, staring up at the ceiling like it’s sniffing the air.

  Forever frozen in time.

  * * *

  The police arrive with the paramedics, and as soon as they do, a new kind of chaos erupts. It’s the good kind, I know it is, but it’s hard for my brain to process that when I just want to shut out the whole world. Everything is too loud, moving too fast, and Chase and Dax are whisked away into an ambulance after the paramedics pry the rest of us away from them.

  I watch them go with my heart in my throat, and the only comforting thought I have as they disappear from sight is that at least they’re together.

  They have each other.

  And Dax won’t let Chase die.

  The police are moving around the space, cordoning off areas and placing markers near pieces of evidence. They question us briefly, and I’m a little afraid they’re going to make us tell them the whole story right now and that I definitely won’t be able to tell it without losing my shit completely.

  But the paramedics take a look at me, shine a light in my eyes, and tell the officers who arrived on the scene that I need to go to the hospital too. River and Linc come with me, and as soon as the ambulance doors close behind us, exhaustion washes over me like a blanket of darkness.

  We’re still quiet. None of us know what to say. There’s nothing to say until we know if Chase is okay. Grief sits in my chest like a gathering tidal wave, held back only by a thin barrier of hope.

  A thought pricks at the back of my mind, and I pull my cell phone out of my pocket. There are fifteen texts from Hunter, the tone of each one growing increasingly frantic. I scroll down to the last three.

  HUNTER: Please text me if you get this!!!

  HUNTER: Are you okay??

  HUNTER: If I don’t hear from you in ten minutes, I’m calling the cops. Fuck, I should have already, no matter what you said. Call me!!! Please!!

  She sent that one eight minutes ago.

  My fingers shake as I tap out a message, the paramedic moving around in the small space by my head and Linc and River sitting alongside me, hands resting on my hip and thigh.

  Possessive.

  Reassuring.

  ME: I’m okay. I’m so fucking sorry, Hunter. I know I scared the shit out of you. I didn’t mean to.

  HUNTER: JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, LOW! What the fuck happened??? What’s going on??

  My eyes are getting bleary. It’s hard to focus on the screen well enough to type out a message, but I blink a few times and try again.

  ME: I’ll tell you everything. I promise.

  And I mean it. I will.

  Because I finally can.

  26

  “You fucking asshole.”

  Those are the first words Dax says to Chase when his brother wakes up.

  He was in surgery for several hours, and the doctor said he was incredibly lucky the bullet missed both his heart and his lung. He needed an immediate blood transfusion due to heavy blood loss, and Doctor Campbell said if the paramedics had arrived even a few minutes later, he might not have made it.

  It’s hard to comprehend that. The difference a few minutes can make, how they can literally be the difference between life and death.

  I try not to think about it too hard, actually, because it hurts my heart even to imagine it.

  Chase cracks a smile, his bright grin shining through all the pain meds he’s doped up on. “Bigger asshole.”

  He lifts one finger to point at Dax, and Dax grabs his hand, squeezing tight as his jaw clenches, his expression torn between amusement, relief, and lingering pain and fear.

  Dax’s right arm is bound up in a sling. His injury was less life-threatening, but he won’t be able to use that arm for a while. Everyone else—including me—got away with pretty minor scrapes and bruises.

  Well, I have a mild concussion, but it honestly feels like nothing at the moment.

  A nurse pokes her head into the room. “Excuse me. The police would like to speak with the four of you.” She steps inside, glancing at Chase as she pulls down his chart. “And Doctor Campbell will be here in just a moment to check on you.”

  Dax grips Chase’s hand tighter, looking like someone will have to physically pry him away from his brother’s side, but Chase shakes his head, his eyes still a little glazed and his voice scratchy.

  “Dude. Go.” His gaze flicks to Linc, River, and me. Lincoln has his arms around me, holding onto me with my back to his front, and River’s fingers are interlaced with mine. “They need you.”

  Intense emotion burns in Dax’s sea-green eyes, and he bends down to press his forehead against Chase’s, closing his eyes for a moment. I can see the boy in the bed visibly relax, as if his brother’s nearness is doing more to soothe him than all the pain meds in the world.

  When Dax finally pulls back, I step out of Linc’s embrace to lean over the bed too, smoothing my hand over Chase’s soft, coppery hair.

  “I love you,” I whisper, because it’s true, and I’m going to make sure he hears it every day.

  A heartbreakingly soft smile spreads across his face, and his eyes clear a little as he looks up at me, our faces only a foot apart. “That’s good. Because I love you too.”

  I drop my head to kiss him, pressing my lips to his like I’m sealing something. A vow, maybe.

  The nurse stands nearby as she flips through his chart, but I catch her looking at us with a small smile on her face—and she doesn’t bat an eye when I step away from Chase and am immediately enfolded in Lincoln’s arms again, or when Dax rounds the bed and takes my hand before we turn to leave.

  I glance back at her once more as we head out. Instead of the slightly confused, searching expression I’ve seen on most people’s faces when they see me with the guys, her smile has only grown.

  I guess not everybody thinks it’s shocking.

  The guys’ parents all showed up at the hospital shortly after we got here, notified by the ER staff that their sons had been brought in. Mr. and Mrs. Lauder, who’ve never seemed that concerned one way or another about what the twins do, looked anxious and pale as they waited for Chase and Dax to get out of surgery. I hope this makes them rethink the way they’ve treated their kids and realize how much they’ve taken the two amazing boys they brought into this world for granted.

  The Lauders, Bettencourts, and Blacks are all in the waiting room with the police officers, and when we arrive, everyone is ushered into a large meeting room. The kings and I sit on one side of a long table with the cops on the other, and the boys’ parents gather around us. I feel a twinge of sadness when I realize that the only pare
nt missing is mine—and I wonder if she even knows what’s happened.

  “All right. Let’s start from the beginning. How did you four know Alexander Hollowell?”

  The officer in charge, who introduced himself as James Morgan, leans forward and rests his elbows on the table, his fingers laced together.

  The guys and I look at each other, and then we begin to speak. The story comes out slowly at first, because none of us know quite where to start. But when we get to the part about Iris’s death, about seeing the man in the black mask slid out of his car and check her still form before speeding away, Officer Morgan holds up a finger to stop us.

  “Give us a few moments, please.”

  We take a short break, and when we reconvene fifteen minutes later, there’s a new person in the room. Detective Dunagan takes a seat next to Morgan, his eyes narrowing slightly as his gaze lands on me.

  “Didn’t we have an appointment to chat earlier today, Miss Thomas?”

  I nod, a little shell-shocked at his presence. “Yeah. Sorry. I—I couldn’t make it.”

  “I see.” He doesn’t comment on it further, just flips open his notebook and leans back, waiting for our story to continue.

  So we start again.

  We go back to the beginning, but this time it flows easier. The boys and I trade off speaking, picking up threads someone else dropped and filling in blank spaces to create the most complete picture possible. The story, the surreal situation that has overtaken my life for the past several months, sounds crazy when we say it all out loud like this. But no one in the room laughs at us or tells us to stop making shit up. I guess the carnage at Judge Hollowell’s house lends credence to our words.

  Those bodies got there somehow, and as we lay out the chain of events that led up to it, I can feel Detective Dunagan watching us with intense focus.

  When we get to the part about how Niles D’Amato and his men forced us to accompany them to Hollowell’s house to confront him, River surprises me by interjecting something.

  “After they put us into the SUVs, Niles stood outside talking to two of his men. He said Judge Hollowell was the one who killed Iris—I think she saw Hollowell meeting with them or something, and they told him he had to clean it up.”

  Dunagan’s eyebrows lift, and he cocks his head, glancing down at his notes before looking back at River. “I see. Were the windows open on the SUV? Or the door?”

  “No, sir.”

  The detective shakes his head, looking almost disappointed, as if he didn’t want to catch one of us in a lie. “Well then, I don’t see how you could’ve heard their conversation with such clarity. If they were outside the car and you were inside—doors closed, windows up.”

  River shrugs lightly. “I didn’t hear them. I read their lips.”

  Now Dunagan’s eyebrows drop down, as if he’s trying to figure out how to make sense of what River just said. “I’m sorry?”

  “I’m mostly deaf. I have almost no hearing in my right ear, and just a little in my left. Since I can’t hear, I read lips.”

  As he speaks, my gaze flies to him, and I can sense Linc and Dax tensing beside me. River hides his hearing impairment from almost everyone, keeping it a secret at school with the help of his three best friends. But he just told everyone in this room about it as if it were nothing.

  Mr. Bettencourt’s face tightens with something like embarrassment, and he suddenly won’t look at River, but the boy with slate-gray eyes and messy brown hair doesn’t spare a glance for his father either. He keeps his gaze on the detective, and he looks so calm, self-assured, and confident that my heart swells with a burst of pride.

  His father may be ashamed. But River isn’t.

  “I see.” Dunagan looks at the boy beside me again, and I wait to see some sign of pity or dismissal in his eyes. But the only thing I find is a bright gleam of interest. “And what did they say? I’m assuming they were unaware you could eavesdrop on them like that?”

  “Yes, sir. I think so.” River takes a breath, speaking carefully like always. “Niles said Hollowell was more trouble than he was worth. He said first it was one teenager they had to get rid of, now five more. I got the impression they pressured Hollowell to kill Iris after she found out about them. Then he asked one of his men if he’d taken care of the car that killed Iris.”

  My spine stiffens, my stomach flipping over like a floundering fish as I turn to stare at River. Holy fuck.

  He never mentioned this. Not that there’s been any fucking time in the whirlwind of events of the past several hours. But now I understand how he knew Niles planned to kill us.

  And the car. The car that killed Iris…

  “What did his man say?” Dunagan’s pen hovers poised over his pad of paper, and he’s watching River with an unblinking gaze.

  “He said it hadn’t been destroyed yet. That it was in the warehouse on Chapel Drive. Then Niles told him to deal with it as soon as they dealt with us.”

  Dunagan makes a note, scribbling so fast I can tell his brain is outpacing his hand. Then he glances up again. “Anything else?”

  “No, sir. That was all they said before they split up to get in the cars with us.”

  “All right. And then what happened?”

  We continue on with our story, detailing our arrival at Hollowell’s house and what happened after the judge arrived back home. The guys do most of the talking, because my mind is stuck on one thing.

  A car.

  There’s a dark sedan in a warehouse somewhere with Iris’s DNA on it.

  A car that’s not my mother’s.

  I try to tamp down the surge of desperate hope that rises up in me, but it seeps up through the cracks in my resolve anyway, infusing my body with a buzzing energy.

  The boys slow down again toward the end, and I tune back into what they’re saying as they haltingly describe the moments after Mitch tried to execute us. The whole thing probably only lasted a minute or two, but so much happened that it felt like a hundred times that, and everything so was chaotic that it’s hard to paint a clear picture of what went down.

  Between the four of us, we’re able to sort out the timeline of events pretty well, and when we finally stop talking, the room goes completely silent. The guys’ parents all look like they’re in fucking shock, and even the cops look a little rattled.

  Detective Dunagan finally nods, casting a glance down at his notebook before looking back at us, rubbing his fingers over his temple. “That was incredibly dangerous. Monumentally stupid. You know that, right?”

  “Yes.”

  All four of us speak without a moment’s hesitation.

  He blows out a breath, shaking his head again. “Well, as long as you know.”

  The officers ask us a few more questions, and Dunagan warns us to be prepared to go over the story several more times, because that’s just how things go in investigations like this. Then he slides his chair back from the table and gets up, sliding his notebook back into an inner pocket of his jacket.

  “We’ll be looking into this. Chapel drive dead-ends at Hennepin, so there aren’t too many places that warehouse could be. We’ll find it.”

  He dips his head, then turns and heads for the door. Before he can reach it, I lean forward. “And if you find something there? If you find the car?”

  He stops with his hand on the knob and turns to look back at me. “We’ll run forensics on it. If it truly was the car used to kill Iris Lepiane, there should be DNA evidence for us to find.”

  “And if you find it?”

  His expressions softens just a little, so imperceptibly I could almost convince myself I imagined it.

  “Then I imagine the charges against your mother will be dropped.”

  27

  “You’re fidgeting.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Uh, yeah, Low.” Chase chuckles. “You are.”

  “I’m nervous.”

  Linc’s arms wrap around me from behind, his warm, solid body enclosing mine
as his breath fans over the back of my neck. “You have nothing to be nervous about, baby.”

  He’s right. I know he’s right.

  But my stomach is still in knots, my heart tapping out an erratic rhythm as we stand outside the Fox Hill Correctional Center waiting for Mom to be released.

  A new wave of nerves hits me at the thought, and I wrap my arms over Lincoln’s, holding him closer to me as we stare at the entrance to the prison. The guys all offered to come with me to pick her up—even Chase, who was just released from the hospital and is still a little pale and tired looking. I worried a little about him overexerting himself, but I could see in his eyes how much he wanted to come, so I didn’t put up a fight.

  And now they’re all here.

  About to meet my mom.

  That’s one of the reasons for the nerves wreaking havoc on my internal organs right now.

  The other is an unreasonable fear that someone will stop her before she can step out into the sunny, crisp air as a free woman. That Detective Dunagan will call and say it was all a mistake, it wasn’t Iris’s DNA they found on that car in the warehouse on Chapel. That a paternity test hasn’t revealed her unborn child to be the offspring of Judge Alexander Hollowell.

  But all those things are true, and with Hollowell no longer manipulating things behind the scenes or paying off dirty cops to plant evidence, the truth has finally come to light.

  I shift in Linc’s arms, and River leans down to plant a kiss on my lips. “We’re here for you, Low. No matter what.”

  His words are soft, and I close my eyes and nod as he pulls away. They know Mom knows about them, but I can tell the guys are a little nervous too.

  Or maybe “nervous” isn’t the right word.

  Protective.